The Senate voted last night to confirm Janet Yellen's nomination to Federal Reserve chair. She is the first woman in the hundred year history of the Fed, but is expected to continue the policies of her predecessors.

At least 100,000 people eligible for Medicaid are still waiting to be enrolled due to problems with the Obamacare website.

Tea Party groups are pushing back against new regulations for tax-exempt organizations proposed by the IRS.

In less than a week, the price of marijuana in Colorado has doubled as, surprise!, government regulations have helped leave supply far short of demand.

Americans are living longer than ever, with the average life expectancy of today's babies approaching 80, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Factoring for Obamacare?

LA County's 71-year-old sheriff is expected to resign today, a month after 18 of his deputies were arrested in a federal corruption and civil rights abuse investigation.

The Satanic Temple, based in New York City, hope to erect a ten-foot-statue of Baphomet at the Oklahoma state capitol. They say they want it to promote compassion and empathy, and it would also function as a chair for people to sit on the lap of Satan. Does New York have one?

Dennis Rodman says Kim Jong Un is his friend and he loves him. He's returning to North Korea, bringing other former NBA players for an exhibition game for Kim's birthday. He says he doesn't want to tell Kim how to do things but hopes the game brings an opportunity to "talk about certain things."

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This person can vote: more science and essentialism …My first essentialist thought on men’s violence was that only men could ever build an entire necrophilic society around the raping and controlling of women’s reproductive capacities because only men are biologically capable of doing it, using their own biology as weapons against women ? penis and semen. So I saw that patriarchy fitted to men’s biology to the extent that it is only achievable through their biological capacity to rape and impregnate women. Also, I saw their hatred of women partly as an of envy women’s reproductive power and obsession with their own incapacity to reproduce life….

…I’m pretty sure that we’d have loads more healing, psychic, telepathic and other transcendental superpowers were we not crippled from birth by men, and that men have reduced our powers generation after generation of genocide.

It also means that only women would have had the necessary brain power to create language, writing, art, science, houses, pottery, and invent all the beautiful things of humanity. There is also increasing evidence that women are responsible for it throughout the history of humanity. Digging a bit deeper into the background of male history also attests of the fact that women have systematically been the inventors and creators while men stole their knowledge and skills, erased women’s motherhood of it and turned the knowledge and skills into weapons against women and life….

My wife’s vegetarian best friend couldn’t figure out how to play a DVD on the TV we got for the kids 16 years ago. “Did you try just shoving it in the slit? It’ll start right up.” She frowned at me. “You are so sexist.”

It’s when a woman is hit by a bus and through the magic of science pushes out a baby 9 months later. You’re just jealous that women are strong enough to not only survive getting hit by a bus but that you can’t participate in the miracle of life*.

An effective way to begin arousal is to watch the last :60 of the BCS championship game where Jameis Winston leads FSU down the field and throws the game winning TD with :13 left completing the collapse of Auburn and SEC dominance…

Kids in chess club don’t talk about football either, nor do they give a shit about football players.

Except when they’re complaining, “I’m a nice, sensitive guy that respects women and their feelings–I’d treat Brooke so much better than that asshole! She’s only with him because he’s on the football team.”

It’s obvious you never met a kid in chess club. Little Ravi Shivaraj was already betrothed to his future wife at the age of three and little Liu Zheng is aware that after he finished law school, after finishing medical school, of course, he’ll have no problems finding a mate.

Well, at least, you’re correct in that the White dude in the club gives a shit about football players, but that’s because he’s gay.

Mine didn’t have on either, except for those of us who played in the library during a free period. However in college, we did have one and later, at another institution, I was faculty adviser to the Chess and Go Club. They didn’t give a shit about football either, but that was because this was in Thailand and they have no clue what American football is.

Substitute Math club for Chess club and that was my experience. Only in the American version the Indian kids were second generation and decidedly uninterested in arranged marriage machinations of their grandparents back in India. They mainly dreamed of getting a white chick to hide from their parents.

I was merely groping for another example of people believing they’re envied by people who really don’t envy them at all, or who actively are pleased to not be participating in whatever it’s being asserted is the source of the envy.

I don’t show other people pictures of my kid because I think they envy me.

I show other people pictures of my kid because my kid is more interesting to me than anything in their lives, so FUCK YOU WITH YOUR STUPID STORY ABOUT YOUR PULITZER PRIZE LOOK AT THIS PICTURE OF MY KID.

This person can vote: PIV is always rape, ok? …First, well intercourse is NEVER sex for women. Only men experience rape as sexual and define it as such. Sex for men is the unilateral penetration of their penis into a woman (or anything else replacing and symbolising the female orifice) whether she thinks she wants it or not ? which is the definition of rape: that he will to do it anyway and that he uses her and treats her as a receptacle, in all circumstances ? it makes no difference to him experiencing it as sexual. That is, at the very least, men use women as useful objects and instruments for penetration, and women are dehumanised by this act. It is an act of violence.

…If we look at the act in more detail (skip this parag if you can’t take it), PIV is a man mounting on a woman to thrust a large member of himself into her most intimate parts, often forcing her to be entirely naked, banging himself against her with the whole weight of his body and hips, shaking her like he would stuff a corpse, then using her insides as a receptacle for his penile dejection. How is this a normal civilised, respectful way to treat anyone? Sorry for the explicit picture, but this is what it is and it’s absolutely revolting and violating….

…The fact intercourse causes so many infections and tears and warts attests to the unnaturalness of intercourse, that it’s not meant to be. The vagina’s primary function isn’t to be penetrated by a penis but to eject a baby for birth. They are two muscle tissues / sphincters pressed against each other to help the baby be pushed out. Penetration of the penis into the vagina is completely unnecessary for conception….

I have met some women who really really like PIV. In fact I met a woman who liked PIV and other similar acts so much that she has decided to make such activities as frequent as possible. So that must mean we are both rape victims, utterly seduced by our own biology. That’s okay.

It’s okay to not like sex. Just don’t tell the rest of the world that they’re weird for liking it. If sex weren’t really really fun would so many people exist?

My wife is fairly easily multi orgasmic through oral or manual stimulation, but give her the choice of a dozen orgasms over the coursr of an hour and 5 minutes of foreplay followed by 5 minutes of intercourse and she’ll take the latter every time.

Which is further evidence of male oppression since the men have prevented the women from self-inventing the technology for creating sperm and depositing it in a way that is self directed and civilized.

If these women ever have a son, how can that son not end up completely hating women and therefore being rapists because they hated their own mother so much? Man i would love to troll over at that comment section. Mother of God!!

[T]o whom it may concern, I’m doing you a massive favour and being super nice in saying that i’m not publishing any comments which include the following: “PIV as rape trivialises real rape victims” and “but, but, I like sex and you’re insulting women or men who like sex”; and “you’re just doing sex the wrong way”

Uh, no, you’re refusing to engage with people who have opposing viewpoints, and trying (and failing) to claim the moral high ground, and being overall smug and dishonest.

The Satanic Temple, based in New York City, hope to erect a ten-foot-statue of Baphomet at the Oklahoma state capitol. They say they want it to promote compassion and empathy, and it would also function as a chair for people to sit on the lap of Satan. Does New York have one?

No, we tend to frown on useful art installations and sponsor absurdist abstract.

Yeah, lib “friends” on Facebook keep posting this and are saying it should be A-Okay if they allow things like Ten Commandment monuments and some such.

Okay, I don’t buy the whole “separation of Church and State” as liberals see it. I’m not a Christian, but this is a prodominantly Christian nation. It doesn’t bother me to see Christian idols about or monuments honoring the Ten Commandments. If the predominate religion were something else, I would expect to see it displayed more. But seriously, they are just trolling with this crap. The government doesn’t need to cater to 10 people while offending 99.9% of the rest of the people.

If the monument had been there for decades, I might be sympathetic to your argument, but it was a recent and explicitly political act and the Christians jumped through some elaborate hoops to plunk that monument down. I’m fine with them getting a taste of their own medicine.

The establishment part is when you let some religions do that with their own funds, but you declare the monuments of other religions too offensive to allow this.

Seriously, I don’t see how much more explicitly you can violate the Establishment Clause than to declare, “Well, we’re going to let the religions we like undertake activities on public lands, but your religion sucks and offends all right-thinking people, so fuck you, hit the bricks.”

The best eunuch was a pastor who removed his testicles so he could have a fake vajayjay for extra pleasure (he has hormone shots to maintain his sex drive. Oh, and he rerouted his urethra). I’ll never forget the sight of him lying back on his bed, lifting his cassock, and moving his largish penis aside so we could check out his new bits.

BTW, his partner was living as a woman and saving up for her surgery, but money is tight on the salary of a clerk in holy orders,

You have to love low interest rates. These savers who gripe about them feel entitled to something for nothing. With inflation near death the market won’t pay you 7% to use your money and you don’t deserve it.

Don’t lock eyes with ’em, don’t do it. Puts ’em on edge. They might go into berzerker mode; come at you like a whirling dervish, all fists and elbows. You might be screaming “No, no, no” and all they hear is “Who wants cake?” Let me tell you something: They all do. They all want cake.

Funny, I thought it was the folks using other people’s money for next to nothing who apparently feel entitled to something for nothing.

Since this includes bankers, generally, whether they are hitting the discount window or holding real people’s money for re-lending, I feel pretty safe that their use of an organization that they control (the Fed) to suppress interest rates to near zero is acting out this feeling of entitlement.

Wait, banks AREN’T using the money people put into savings to show how awesome their balance sheets are to get practically free money from the FED to turn around and loan to people at rates well above what they’re paying?

I’m sorry buy 0.05% isn’t an interest rate, that’s a joke and a piss in your eye from the banks.

Tea Party groups are pushing back against new regulations for tax-exempt organizations proposed by the IRS.

Oh come on, have the Tea Party groups even done any voter registration outreach programs in neighborhoods which coincidentally have demographics certain to come out in the Democrats favor? Have they done any promotion of the President’s signature legislation? No? Then they obviously aren’t tax-exempt.

Greetings, reasonoids. And what a fine morning it is after that invigorating win last night, eh?

Best story so far: I have a friend who happens to have the first initial “J” and last name “Fisher” who has been at FSU longer than Jimbo. He posted a fun email he received from a very butt-hurt Alabama fan and lawyer.

“Beat 3d or 4th best team in SEC. Want to try our schedule next year?? Sorry forgot about Mizz. Maybe FSU is 3d in west. 4th or 5th in SEC?? You coached here. You know it is true.

[Lawyer Name], Partner

[Law Firm Contact Info]

And my response:

“Dear [Name Redacted], Partner,

Three points: 1.) While I graduated top of my class with two degrees from LSU, I was never given the opportunity to coach the football team there. 2.) Before firing off an email message to harass somebody, perhaps you should make 100% sure the person you are sending it to is, indeed, the person you intend to harass. 3.) Sounds like a big bunch of sour grapes to me. Go Noles!”

I love butthurt SEC fans. LSU actually has one real inter-conference game next year (Wisconsin). Alabama is sticking with the cupcakes (good luck against the Florida Atlantic Owls and Western Carolina Catamounts).

Seems some of the SEC Teams are willing to play a big game outside the conference early in the season. I believe the computers and voters should penalize teams (from any conference) for scheduling joke games.

I think a playoff system is great and does allow for better schedules. As is it seems a little unfair to require a perfect season to reach the national title game. It’s a lot easier to make it through, say, the Big 10 than it is the SEC, ACC or even the PAC 12. So I understand scheduling easier non-conference games. The thing is everyone does it. There are a few good non-conference games every year, but most big schools don’t want to blow their chance early when maybe their team isn’t ready. That’s why I like a an 8 team playoff with the major conference champs and a few open slots. I like that in basketball we get a lot of good non-conference games to start the season -UK has played Mich St, NC and U of L- as coaches are less afraid of a loss. Of course they have gone overboard and have too large of a tournament.

I would bet on SEC most seasons. This year wasn’t a great defensive year for them but usually they are tops in overall defense, which is the type of football I like and why I like their games. Outside of Stanford, who plays defense in the Pac-12?

It’s silly. Most years, the SEC is clearly better than other conferences. Playoffs will likely show a similar record of SEC domination, at least for the near term. These things can change, of course, especially as the game changes.

I think the strength of the conference was greater back when recruiting tended to be more regional. Florida (the state, I mean) used to only send a few high school players around the country. Now, players are distributed more widely.

Congrats to FSU. I actually predicted Auburn would win, basically for the reasons we saw for most of the game–FSU couldn’t really deal with their offense–but they managed to overcome it with the same mojo Auburn had to get to the title game against all odds. And no, I don’t particularly like Auburn either.

Speaking of Clowney, I bet the Bucs draft him if available. The conventional wisdom is that they’ll take a QB, but I think they’ll have to stretch quite a bit for one at 7, and an edge rusher is a huge need.

Probably predicting a resurgence of the Big 10. Musberger actually said they had a good bowl season after the Mich St win. I can’t remember who called the Ohio St. game, but they were gushing about how good the Buckeyes, and best in the nation in many areas, were even as they were losing. Some people just won’t let an idea die.

They’re not wrong, though. Ohio State’s running game, o-line, and front seven were as good as anybody’s (though the o-line played like shit against Clemson), and with their recruiting and coaching staff they’re going to continue disappointing in big games for years to come.

Their problem was that their biggest weakness this year was way larger than any other contending team’s biggest weakness, and was duly exploited. But they still took a very good Clemson team to the wire despite it being an unfavorable matchup for them (I honestly figured Boyd to Watkins would go for at least 10/175 and 3 TD’s before the game started), their playing without 2 of their top 4 defenders (including the only member of the secondary worth a damn), and Miller playing hurt.

Nonsense. Just look at the running splits; OSU ran for 308 per game and gave up 109. This contrasts with 151 / 168 for ND and 196 / 183 for UT. Feel free to bitch about the schedule, but that’s not enough to make up for that kind of discrepancy, and that discrepancy is a reflection of their line strength.

Now that Urban Meyer will be putting mostly his recruits on the field I expect Ohio State to be significantly improved. Meyer (and some other SEC coaches) recruit speed, figuring they can teach technique. OSU (and some others) have been too enamored of big High School statistics rather than ability.

I’d put Carlos Hyde against anyone. I think he’ll make the best pro of any of the runners in college this year. Braxton Miller will last a year or two as an experiment. The OSU secondary was weak all year, and the D-line covered for them. But Michigan exposed the weakness and MIch St and Clemson exploited it. New D coach will also help.

Auburn was the underdog and covered, and left 10 points on the field. One of the easier bets I made all year.

What was shocking was how pedestrian Winston was – Manziel had 4 TD and over 400 yards passing and 1 rush TD against this same defense, the Mizzou QB had similar numbers – while “Famous” had a paltry 237 yards. He’s also slower than molasses, and has a pretty weak arm. What an overrated player.

His arm is fine. He’s not quick, although he’s fast enough in a straight line. Dude changes direction slower than a oil tanker. Also, he had about 325 against the same Duke D as Johnny Football in three quarters.

The ACLU used to argue in court that certain forms of censorship were wrong, but now they tell the Supreme Court that this censorship is OK after all. They say their position has “evolved over time.” You believe in evolution, don’t you?

TRIGGER WARNING: The censorship in question would be imposed on prolife protesters, eg, forbidding them from peacefully distributing literature within 100 feet of an abortion clinic.

(From the link within the link, it seems the latest case tries to impose a 35′ no-speech bubble, and the Supremes want to use this case to re-examine a precedent allowing a Silence 100′ Radius spell, I mean law.

Here’s a question. And I honestly haven’t made up my mind about the answer. Is it my right of free speech to follow you around wherever you go in public every day and call you an asshole and a murderer and whatever other unpleasant things I can think of?

If you can’t easily escape the in-your-face taunts then I’d say that someone could intervene to stop it. If the taunter is not following the tauntee around then I’d say that intervention is not warranted at that time.

I harassment in public is not protected speech, then I would be inclined to say that neither is protesting abortion as close to the entrance to an abortion clinic as you want. The people employed there cannot easily escape daily taunting.

It’s an asymmetrical motivation structure. The people working in clinics aren’t interested in following the leafleteers home and calling them vile names through a megaphone all night, or showing up at their children’s school to hold up posters of women dead and bloody from botched backalley abortions, or ringing a church to scream at parishioners going to mass. The staff and visitors to the clinics bring it on themselves by not answering speech with more speech.

It’s OK “if the Secretary finds for good cause that the delay is impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest, and incorporates a statement of the findings and the reasons therefor in the rule issued.”

Look, if the law says that people should be treated unequally, then everyone is treated equally under the law regardless of what unequal treatment they receive.

How that end-around passes muster, I don’t know, but everyone seems to buy it. The law creates classes of people and institutions that can be treated unequally and then the claim is made that under that law unequal treatment *is* equal treatment. It really boggles the mind.

She is not pretty. But I have a terrible crush on Sabine Schmitz. I am seriously going to save my shekels and do that before a I die. She is the mistress of the Nurburgring and has done more hot laps on it than anyone else. She grew up near it. This is a woman who told Jeremy Clakson after he had done an 11 minute lap in some kind of Jaguar that she could beat that time in a van and sure enough either did it or came awfully close. She is just awesome.

I think so too. I just didn’t want to get into the usual hit and run “she is a dog, you clearly have terrible taste in women” debate. But yeah, Sabine is the bomb. She is just not Hollywood starlet pretty. But who cares. Some anorexic, silicone starlet can’t drive the Nurburgring in seven minutes.

See above RC. I was just trying to avoid the usual Hit and Run debates about women. I think she is very pretty. But usually saying even a gorgeous woman is attractive on here illicit the “oh my God she is so ugly” responses.

I wrote that she probably can turn a lap with passenger in less than 10 minutes (oh, yeah, the less than sign), turn a passenger around in 30 minutes (with whatever refuel, photo op, car checkout, etc., is necessary. If she does 10 laps a day, she can rake in at least EUR4000, which is not bad for a day’s work, even with maintenance and insurance expenses.

Real Satanists never live up to the image I have of them from listening to heavy metal. You expect Alyster Crowley living in some Welsh country home having orgies and sacrificing virgins. Instead you get earnest annoying failed hippies.

One theory holds that Enlil, the ancient Sumerian God, was the “harsh” god of the OT and Enki was the, the scientist, was the “nice” god. Well Enki and Enlil had an argument and the theory goes Enki became the “satan” of old and Enlil the “God”. The big thing is though Enki was the one who loved Man, his creation, so that means the “God” that demands subservience is Enlil and he is bad while Enki gives free will and knowledge (the fruit) and he is good. SO, if you look at it modern religion (Abrahamic) focuses mostly on Enki…hence satan…Yup, fundies are satanists.

I think freaking out the normals is a big part of it. I doubt that there are all tha many truly sincere satanists out there. But there is a bit more to the actual belief system. Satanism is either a weird undercurrent of Christianity or a hedonistic, materialistic worldview (more the Lavey sort).

Remember, satan originally just means an adversary. It doesn’t have to be the god of darkness or the ruler of hell or something like that.

. . . not because I did anything illegal or against company policy, but because I embarrassed this person.

Yes dear, you *did do something against company policy – its against company policy to *embarrass* the fucking company. That one rule is pretty much industry standard, no matter what your industry is.

Plus, tips *are* optional – What you’re wages are is not my problem. Its not my responsibility (heartless teabagging ratfucker that I am) to help you raise your family. I don’t care that what you’re wages are, are not enough to live on, are less than minimum wage, whatever. That’s between you and your employer. 18-fucking-percent is ridiculous as ‘standard’. You wanna tip? Provide me some service that’s worth the money. Fucking Subway employees want tips nowadays.

Mentally ill 18-year-old shot dead by police in front of his mortified family after parents called them to help him as he had an episode Keith Vidal, 18, was held down by two officers and shot dead by another, his family alleged at a Monday press conference He was having a schizophrenic episode when his family called 911 to help calm him down The officer who shot the boy to death was on the scene less than a minute before firing his gun, according to an incident report A detective has been put on leave while authorities look into the incident

After thinking about it, I’m starting to doubt the story. It says that the father grabbed the cop as he was getting ready to shoot the kid a second time. Nobody grabs a cop and gets away with it. Unless the father was beaten by all three cops to within an inch of his life, I find it difficult to believe that he grabbed a cop.

I am not sure. The other cops may have been a bit stunned. A handgun going off inside of a room like that would have made a hell of a bang. And even cops had to have been a bit shocked when he just shot the kid. I could see where the other cops were too stunned to do anything.

Also, the cop was from another department. The cops often hate other departments. So they might not have given a shit.

They (and the one who shot) might have also realized that he just committed murder and was completely unjustified.

I’m sure that he will never see the punishment he deserves, but unless I am missing some important information, this seems like it might just be egregious enough that some charges will come. It does happen occasionally. Like when that cop shot the guy on the subway in Oakland a year or two ago.

Certainly. I’m just saying that this seems like a case where we might get a little bit of thin gruel. Not what he deserves, of course, but they don’t universally get off without any criminal charge at all, which several people seem to be implying.

When they restrained the murderous cop from walloping the stunned, grieving father of the murder victim, the two other cops exhibited the vestiges of humanity that they have. Certainly they, too, were stunned by murderer’s brutality.

I am sure that, on they have had time to reflect upon what they did, they will do their duty to protect their brother pig.

Belly button ornaments are the worst. I don’t care how hot a girl is, if she’s got one of those things dangling in her belly button it’s just a huge turn off. I don’t know why but I fucking hate them with a passion.

“If I say a whole system must be upset for me to win, I am saying that I cannot sit in the game, and that safer rules must be made to give me a chance. I repudiate that. If others are in there, deal me a hand and let me see what I can make of it, even though I know some in there are dealing from the bottom and cheating like hell in other ways” ~Zora Neale Hurston

Happy Birthday to Hurston who I didn’t know till a year ago that she was a libertarian.

She is a great writer. But, she was a total iconoclast and was way too smart to buy into the bullshit leftism of post war black thinkers. As a result she was basically written out of history for a long time only to be discovered later.

We spend all of this time wasting students’ time with lousy minority writers in the name of “diversity” and the academy largely ignored Hurston, a black women and easily one of the ten best American novelists of the 20th Century.

It almost makes you think the academy is really about leftism not diversity.

Absolutely. A lot of the black and white academics basically ignored her works because she didn’t tow the line. She basically ranted against racism but at the same thought that forcing people to cooperate and be together would make race matters alot worse. And she was right.

People like Sowell and Shelby Steele are shut out of acadamia because their views clash with many of those in the ivory tower. In college, I’ve learned all too well that the universities aren’t exactly the bedrock of the exchange of ideas.

“It’s not just the number, but who they are. You’ll find under the Obamacare exchanges that the academic hospitals have declined to participate, along with the specialists who practice at those hospitals. The same is true of cancer hospitals,” she said.

“People who are seriously ill need to stay away from these exchange plans,” McCaughey said.

Slayton said the gap between doctor availability in Chicago under the Obamacare and Walmart plans is dramatic.

“You will notice there are 9,837 doctors [under Obamacare]. But the larger network is 24,904 doctors. Huge, huge difference,” he said.

And more people will learn the hard lesson that health insurance != health care.

Yes and no. It is healthcare in the sense that your insurance plan determines which doctors you will see. So if you plan has a shitty network of doctors, you health care is going to suffer.

If insurance just paid for any doctor you went to rather than only paying for ones on the network, insurance would not be healthcare. But since the insurance plan is also the network, it is in a real sense one and the same.

It says the 18 year old child is “not a party to the divorce,” implying that the 4 minor children *are* parties. But I doubt they’re parties in the strict sense of being able to speak for themselves in court (through a guardian ad litem). Am I correct?

You can always look away. It of course depends on the college. Clearly not worth it at Bryn Mawr or some east coast lesbian school. But at a big Southern State school? The physics lecturer would be an acceptable downside when you are talking about that kind of up side.

Chris Hayes is butthurt that the big meanies at Drudge keep making fun of global warming.

It is really great. All my life only those on the right were ever subjects of ridicule. But thanks to the AGW cult, leftists are the punchline for once. To any person outside the leftist hive “I blame Al Gore” or “How about that global warming” will always illicit a laugh. These people have become a joke and they are so smug and insulated from reality they don’t even realize it.

The best part is how he claims “no one ever said it wouldn’t stop getting cold”. Ah, yeah they did. They said that Americans and British would have to explain to their children what it was like back when it snowed.

They are so fucked. The only way they can sell the drastic solutions they want is to claim the effects are going to be immediate and drastic. But every year they claim that and none of them happen, they look more and more foolish and are reduced to saying “we never said it would be that bad”, in which case they lose any justification for drastic action.

I don’t know how I feel about man-made climate change. The only thing I know for certain is a government led “fix” will most certainly do more harm to our liberty and likely not really fix the problem of CO2 emissions… especially with more and more of the 3rd world using more and more electricity, likely produced through the burning of coal.

The only true fix will be a free market fix. If nuclear hadn’t been regulated to the extent that it has, coal would have seen a much further displacement in the United States and abroad. As it stands, NG and coal, for the time being, are the cheapest forms of electricity producing fuels we have. The only way those will ever be truly displaced is when a cheaper alternative appears. Environmentalists should focus on that part of the problem, not on government mandates to force technology or rules down our throats.

Any problem ever has only been fixed by government force, right? Private sector innovation has never solved any problem ever. I mean, wind and solar don’t even solve the problem so their solution is bunk to begin with. It is a fucking nightmare of cronyism with the average citizen being fucked by higher energy prices and an ever increasing unstable grid for those extra cents/kwh.

How real is AGW, you say? It is so real, that the market has completely ignored it (that is, us, real people) whereas only lefty academicians, governent grant-seekers and clueless journalists continue to cling to the idea like someone who clings to the rip cord of a parachute that refuses to open.

Global warming could be happening exactly as claimed with regards to temperature, but the doomsday predictions accompanying the rise in temperature could be total, power-grabbing bunk. Because people in aggregate aren’t feeling these repercussions means that there isn’t the market activity coincidental with what global warming supposedly does.

As far as I can tell, warmer temperatures are historically a boon to mankind and without government interference a few more degrees would be very beneficial.

I fully agree and realize that. I just mean, if they were honestly worried about climate change this should be how they go about it. I know, I’m living a bit of a fantasy.

From my experience so far, it really is a small minority that believe government force should be left out of the equation all together, which is sad. The nuclear blogs I comment on are usually full of commentators calling for more government money and grants to get nuclear going. There are complaints about the regulations but most wan’t a *new* government fix to counter the over-regulation problem initiated by the government to begin with. In a sane world the fight would be fully for pulling back the regulations and letting private investors take the gamble.

But it really is the “if our guy was just in charge” mentality. There is little thought to the idea that maybe government shouldn’t have the power to destroy an industry when the wrong guy is in charge.

We’ve discussed the same as well. We could save a couple hundred a month on health insurance plus since she is considering going back to school my income would no longer be a factor in her financial aid calculations

About 500 passengers aboard three Amtrak trains were stranded overnight in a remote part of northern Illinois because of blowing and drifting snow, Amtrak officials said today.

The trains were halted late Monday near Mendota, about 80 miles west of Chicago. The passengers were aboard the Southwest Chief from Los Angeles, the Illinois Zephyr from Quincy, Ill., and the California Zephyr from the San Francisco Bay area, Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari told The Associated Press.

The trains became stuck around 4:15 p.m. ET Monday after they hit a 12-foot snow drift that paralyzed the engines, passenger Bryan Plummer told ABC News today by cellphone.

I was not that impressed with his accuracy really. Hindsight is 20/20 so maybe I’m being too hard on him. But still, seems like all the stuff he got right was pretty easy, and then the list tries to spin his bad predictions into good ones.

Dennis Rodman says Kim Jong Un is his friend and he loves him. He’s returning to North Korea, bringing other former NBA players for an exhibition game for Kim’s birthday. He says he doesn’t want to tell Kim how to do things but hopes the game brings an opportunity to “talk about certain things.”

That is, talk about certain photos of Rodman in compromising situations with a little burro, that Kim Jong Un promised to return to him after a few quid pro quos.

I discovered this morning that there are few things that will make a man angrier than not being able to find his cold weather camo beenie/mask and gloves once he’s made the last second decision to take advantage of rare -4 degree temperatures and try and blast himself a coyote.

Yesterday on my way to lunch I had AM talk radio on and Glenn Beck (yes I know) was talking about how he thinks Peter King is insane/off the reservation etc… in regard to Snowden.

Beck also talked about how he disagrees with some of Rand Paul’s opinions on Snowden but overall he thinks Rand is right on point and has been for some time on this issue.

I was really refreshed to hear someone (of what I consider establishment GOP mouthpieces) not talking about how Rand’s foreign policy is insane and actually give the guy compliments on his political ideas.

I think it is a great sign that the GOP might actually be ready for a shift to freedom.

Beck is not establishment GOP. And Paul was brilliant in admitting that Snowden is not without sin but that King and company are nuts on the issue.

That said, most people are tired of the war in Afghanistan and think the Middle East should burn in its own shit.

People were tired of it in 2012. The only reason they rejected Ron Paul is that he couldn’t shut up and make that point without going on about how the the Muslims have a legitimate beef. No one outside of a small minority is going to want to listen to how hard the Muslims have it, which is how that came off.

Rand is a lot smarter than his dad and won’t make that mistake. He will instead make the simple argument that it is no longer our problem and if it does become our problem, ruble doesn’t make trouble. The GOP base will be very receptive to that message.

This is about right with regard to Ron Paul. I really can’t figure out why he had to stick with the “blowback” argument. “It’s just not our problem and it isn’t worth our blood and treasure” would go over well with a lot of Republicans.

The dark night of fascism forever falling on America and landing on Europe

It is difficult to go more than a day in France without hearing someone express the conviction that the greatest problem in the country is its ethnic minorities, that the presence of immigrants compromises the identity of France itself. This conviction is typically expressed without any acknowledgment of the country’s historical responsibility as a colonial power for the presence of former colonial subjects in metropolitan France, nor with any willingness to recognize that France will be ethnically diverse from here on out, and that it’s the responsibility of the French as much as of the immigrants to make this work.

Yup. And the socialist politicians will never understand how they contributed to it happening. If you spend a generation telling the middle class and the majority to go fuck themselves while importing immigrants in and killing the economy and punishing anyone who makes a buck, you shouldn’t be surprised when the majority starts to listen to anyone who is willing to address their concerns even if that someone is pretty awful.

Most of France participated in the Holocaust. One of the great lies that Europe tells itself is that the “Nazis were solely responsible for the holocaust”. Outside of Italy and the Netherlands, all of Europe happily deported their Jews and when the war was over told them they couldn’t come back.

Ever wonder why that whenever someone talks about the Exodus of Jews to Israel after the war they never really explain why the Jews all went there instead of going home? The assumption is that they were so scared by the Holocaust that they wanted to leave. To some degree. But mostly it was because when the survivors went home the local populations told them they were not welcome there anymore. They had nowhere else to go.

I listened to a speech a few years ago by a Holocaust survivor who was a small girl living in then USSR now eastern Poland who managed to survive the Holocaust by living alone in the woods for five years. One of the things she talked about was how when she went home after the war she was told she couldn’t stay there. Years later after the fall of the Berlin Wall she went back to her old town and all of the people there welcomed her pretending that it had never happened, even the ones who were old enough to know better.

But mostly it was because when the survivors went home the local populations told them they were not welcome there anymore. They had nowhere else to go.

That jumped out to me when I first encountered the term “Stateless person” reading some survivor’s memoirs. I remember thinking how can he be stateless, when he had a home town, and presumably the citizenship that all the people who hadn’t been kidnapped from that town ended the war with.

This conviction [that the greatest problem in the country is its ethnic minorities] is typically expressed without any acknowledgment of the country’s historical responsibility as a colonial power for the presence of former colonial subjects in metropolitan France[…]

Leave it to a NYT blogger to completely fly off a tangent when criticizing a country’s penchant for blaming others for problems created by their own government.

Who cares about this abstract “historical responsibility” that the blogger alludes to? Why should that be either comfort or intellectual happy place for a regular French person? The argument is inane. The problems facing the French are entirely their own doing; they have the government that they voted for, and no other. They wanted free stuff paid by others, except the others also want the same. This is what the blogger should be saying, but reading his mini-bio (he’s a professor of the history and philosophy of science, whatever that means) tells me he will never accept such an explanation and instead continue to feel outraged by this wave of popular nativism.

And it will never occur to him that giving people free shit and setting up the “rich” as all purpose scapegoats for the country’s problems might create a mindset that makes it very easy for the country to use minorities as the scapegoat when the free shit runs out.

might create a mindset that makes it very easy for the country to use minorities as the scapegoat when the free shit runs out.

Exactly. He goes on and on expressing his dismay at the level of hostility shown by many French towards minorities (to whom France owes a great deal of “historical responsibility”, presumably) without even a consideration to the argument that the state’s policy of cultivating envy among people to the point of moral decay is the cause of the hostility in the first place.

“without even a consideration to the argument that the state’s policy of cultivating envy among people to the point of moral decay is the cause of the hostility in the first place”

In much the same way that many supporters of affirmative action decry the hostility to minorities on campus and in government workplaces and then call for more affirmative action to combat it, without thinking that perhaps it is giving of special advantages to some of the people on campus and in the workplace that might make some who do not get them resent those who do.

I do not think those in Europe who are anti-immigrant are so because they charge the immigrant populations with being rich, in fact it is usually the opposite (they see the immigrants as the equivalent of ‘poor trash’).

You’re right, they are anti-immigrant because they are still deeply nationalistic and quasi-racist. Unfortunately for ethnic europeans they are screwed unless they decided to revert back to their ethnic cleansing ways.

In fairness to them, at least some of them might be led by fears about the growing influence of Muslim immigrant populations in threatening some basic freedoms. They should not generalize this feeling, but such nuance is a great deal to ask for in a nation where the headlines daily document some concerning behavior by Muslim immigrants in the country.

I don’t disagree but I’m not sure how much slack I want to give them considering that they willfully imported cheap labor from Muslim countries in order to make their socialistic policies kinda/sorta work for a little while, and are now beginning to suffer the consequences.

I do not think those in Europe who are anti-immigrant are so because they charge the immigrant populations with being rich, in fact it is usually the opposite (they see the immigrants as the equivalent of ‘poor trash’).

Indeed, but a culture that promotes envy also fosters jealousy. The fact is that the French want free stuff and also a rigged game that favors them and not others. This is the undelying motivation in such sentiments like anti-immigration and labor or minimum wage laws.

I do not know. It seems to me that a lot of anger towards groups like immigrants is better characterized as ‘resentment’ than jealousy, a resentment that ‘those people’ are ‘coming here and taking jobs and benefits.’ While the scapegoating is similar to scapegoating wealthy minorities (or those perceived as wealth minorities), I am not sure the originating emotion is.

The “rigged game” is welfare. Not every Frenchman is on the dole. A lot of them work just like us. And the ones who work and pay outrageous taxes are not too happy about giving welfare to Muslim Yutes who do nothing but burn shit down.

Welfare really is societal poison. It creates a debilitating sense of entitlement and dependence in its recipients and eventually horrible resentment in those paying the bills.

I think the ‘rigged game’ is that the Algerian et al cheap labor that was brought in was done so to support the socialism the French wanted for themselves but didn’t want to pay for. And now those that are being used for that end are waking up to it and don’t care for it very much.

Actually no Restorus. Yes, cheap Algerian labor was brought in. But they stopped doing labor a long time ago thanks to socialist economic policies. If the Algerians had jobs instead of being on the dole, they wouldn’t be rioting and the native French wouldn’t hate them so much.

The latin Americans here don’t riot do they? No because they have jobs and are too busy working. Make it impossible for them to work and put them all on welfare and we would have the same problem.

When I was on an exchange program in France in 1987, it was all “Arab this”, “Arab that”. Those people are the biggest fucking xenophobic racists on the planet. Well, probably not as much as the Norks, but close.

Schweitzer was beloved by the “libertarian Democrat” crowd back in the Bush years, when the Netroots were looking westward for new approaches to politics. Almost a decade later, the governor is sounding the same notes: anti-war, pro-privacy, in favor of civil liberties, and?this is where the libertarian leanings melt away?generally interventionist on economics. (He does score some points hitting Obama for being a corporatist, but he doesn’t seem very interested in anti-statist alternatives.)

Schweitzer is whole-heartedly opposed to the First Amendment with regard to political speech and monetary contributions.

Someone posted that because he was governor of montana he must be good on 2nd amendment issues. Is he?

I’m not sure, if push came to shove, how vigorously Schweitzer would defend the 2A rights of “civilians”. Especially as a potential Demo candidate for President. He was out of office when Sandy Hook happened; as far as I know, he wisely kept his yap shut. I don’t trust him.

I expect the lieutenant governor, who apparently will be shoved into Baucus’ chair in the Senate, to vote however Chuck Schumer tells him on any gun control legislation. Just like Tester.

Just in case you might be wondering, “Pelosi: Snowden should ‘come back and face the music'” Yep, the hag wants to extract a pound of flesh for making it clear the light-bringer is just one more tin-pot dictator.http://blog.sfgate.com/nov05el…..for-leaks/

I am really glad that craven bitch didn’t do what even the worst of past politicians would have done and resigned after she lost the House as speaker. She is the gift that keeps on giving. Anytime a lefty tells you that they really are concerned about the NSA and agree with Snowden did, you can throw Pelosi in their face and ask “then I guess you have had it with the Democratic Party too?”.

She is such a walking talking embarrassment. But she is a woman and a Democrat and of course will never be asked to shut up or step aside.

What I want to know is, when is the GOP House or even some of the Senators going to do something about the NSA. So far we have Amash-Conyers (in which more House Republicans voted nay than yea) and some good words by Paul, but we should be getting some bills and filibusters out of this.

It is not a GOP versus DNC issue. There are people in both parties who cravenly support the NSA and people in both parties who want something done. So a GOP majority won’t guarantee anything.

The issue is does the public get pissed off enough about this that people in both parties who are now neutral or soft supporters of the NSA decide it is in their political interest to go after it and do Democrats decide that they are going to have to go after Obama.

If that happens the NSA is in a lot of trouble and things will change. But until that happens it will be a few people like Paul and Wyden making waves but not much else.

I get that it is not a party issue, my point is that I realize why so many key Democrats like Pelosi and Reid do not take steps against it, they are ‘company men’ and essentially work for the administration who supports this. My question is why more Republican officials are not pushing bills and filibusters against it, after all they have all the political reason to oppose what the administration does. Boehner, McConnell, Cantor, etc., are missing a golden opportunity to take egg and rub it all over the administration’s face.

It is two things Bo. First, a lot of people make a lot of money off the national security apparatus and don’t want it disturbed. Those intelligence contractors make a lot of money and the companies spread it around liberally. Second, is that most politicians are stupid and rely on what they think is the easy rhetoric. A lot of them haven’t figured out yet that it is no longer 2002 and the “we have to stop the terrorists” doesn’t work like it used to.

It seems to me the simplest explanation is that there is no political benefit fro them to do so. They all want to stay in power, first and foremost, and perhaps see no benefit to pursuing anything along those lines politically so of course do not. All you have to do is look at Peter King as a perfect example of that.

The whole “just face the music” crowd is being so dishonest here. They want to act like he’ll be treated fairly and possibly given a slap on the wrist. In reality, once they get their hands on him, he’ll be torn to pieces in the media as every mendacious shithead politician takes a whack at him from the safety of their position that “it’s just the law” that he be punished.

Even if he were to get lucky and get a jury to nullify the law, he would spend years in solitary waiting for trial. They would never let him out on bail and would stick him in supermax while he waited.

Snowden is committed. No way can he come back. Only a dishonest evil bitch like Pelosi could claim he should come back.

They would scream for his blood, he’d be convicted and sentenced to death, and only the majestic clemency of Obama would bestow upon him a commutation of sentence to life imprisonment with hard labor in Leavenworth.

She may not think so, but plenty of others will, and once they get their mitts on him, all bets are off. And I sincerely would not put it past her to join in the feeding frenzy if it became clear that she would have the cover of the herd of bloodthirsty voices.

In the meantime, that lovable curmudgeon and all-purpose sourpuss Bill O’Reilly thinks that a) drugs will weaken the fabric of the American society, as if there were no drugs before 1955, and b) that the left is especially attracted to the drug culture, as if controlling our very lives wasn’t the left’s steak and eggs.